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Among the works of sentiment which were acknowledged imitations of Yorick, along with Jacobi’s “Winterreise,” probably the most typical and best known was the “Empfindsame Reisen durch Deutschland” by Johann Gottlieb Schummel. Its importance as a document in the history of sentimentalism is rather as an example of tendency than as a force contributing materially to the spread of the movement.
It is not evident whether they read Sterne in the original or in the translation of Zückert, the only one then available, unless possibly the reader gave a translation as he read. Later in the same letter, Caroline mentions the “Empfindsame Reisen,” possibly meaning Bode’s translation.
The satires on “Empfindsamkeit” began to grow numerous at the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, so that the Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung, in October, 1785, feels justified in remarking that such attempts are gradually growing as numerous as the “Empfindsame Romane” themselves, and wishes, “so may they rot together in a grave of oblivion.” Anton Reiser, the hero of Karl Philipp Moritz’sautobiographical novel (Berlin, 1785-90), begins a satire on affected sentimentalism, which was to bring shafts of ridicule to bear on the popular sham, and to throw appreciative light on the real manifestation of genuine feeling. A
The Fragments are concerned, as the editors say, with an evil of the literature in those days, the period of the Sentimentalists and the “Kraftgenies.” Among the seven fragments may be noted: “Lorenzo Eschenheimers empfindsame Reise nach Laputa,” a
A much more successful attempt was the “Sentimental Journey, Intended as a Sequel to Mr. Sterne’s, Through Italy, Switzerland and France, by Mr. Shandy,” two volumes, 12mo, 1793. This was evidently the original of Schink’s work; “Empfindsame Reisen durch Italien, die Schweiz und Frankreich, ein Nachtrag zu den Yorikschen. Aus und nach dem Englischen,” Hamburg, Hoffmann, 1794, pp. 272,
In the second edition of the first volume the author confesses that the title only is derived from Yorick, and states that he was forced to this misuse because no one at that time cared to read anything but “Empfindsame Reisen.” It is also to be noted that the description beneath the title, “von einem deutschen Yorick angestellt,” is omitted after the first volume.
One of the best known of the English Sentimental Journeys was the work of Samuel Paterson, entitled, “Another Traveller: or Cursory Remarks and Critical Observations made upon a Journey through Part of the Netherlands, by Coriat Junior,” London, 1768, two volumes. The author protested in a pamphlet published a little later that his work was not an imitation of Sterne, that it was in the press before Yorick’s book appeared; but a reviewer calls his attention to the sentimental journeying already published in Shandy. This work was translated into German as “Empfindsame Reisen durch einen Theil der Niederlande,” Bützow, 1774-1775,
He had already published one novel in which he exemplified in some measure characteristics of the novelists whom he later sought to condemn and satirize, that is, this first novel, “Faramond’s Familiengeschichte,” is digressive and episodical. “Der Empfindsame” is much too bulky to be really effective as a satire; the reiteration of satirical jibes, the repetition of satirical motifs slightly varied, or thinly veiled, recoil upon the force of the work itself and injure the effect.
The “Empfindsame Reise von Oldenburg nach Bremen,” the author of which was a Hanoverian army officer, H.
The most extensive satire on the sentimental movement, and most vehement protest against its excesses is the four volume novel, “Der Empfindsame,” published anonymously in Erfurt, 1781-3, but acknowledged in the introduction to the fourth volume by its author, Christian Friedrich Timme.
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